Doug Stanhope
speaker
535 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Jun 2024
last heard Feb 2025
Doug Stanhope’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
There's nothing particularly shocking from the senatorial point of view that's happening, even though there is a sense of menace. Then he falls ill. When he recovers, he eliminates Gamalus, his own conceivable rival, and anyone who he thinks might be a kind of particular figure of opposition to him.
And he continues in the wake of his recovery from that illness to pay lip service to his partnership with the Senate in the way that Augustus had done, in the way that Tiberius had done. But then it seems that two years into his reign, he's finally had enough and there is this most spectacular showdown. And he summons the Senate and addresses them
and expresses to them in the most bold, uncompromising way, his utter contempt for everything that they represent. He strips away all these hypocrisies that we were talking about earlier, this pretense that the Senate in some way have any autonomy or power. that Rome is a partnership between the Princeps and the Senate. He says this is absolute nonsense. It's ludicrous.
The idea that Rome is a republic, madness. I am a monarch. I have complete authority over you. You are nothing. You are worms. And just for good measure, he then announces that he is reintroducing the treason trials that he had announced were cancelled with such trumpeting two years before. And the Senate, are so stunned by this that they don't really know what to say.
And Caligula sweeps out and they all just kind of sit there, ashen-faced, as Private Eye would put it. And the following day, they all kind of reconvene and... They pass a formal vote in which they formally thank Caligula for his sincerity and the intelligence of his comments. They praise him for his piety. And they say, such wonderful clemency from Caesar.
Even though we're worms, he's still, you know... We should offer him multiple sacrifices as a way of expressing our gratitude for his clemency and his general all-round decency.
He has the Praetorians. He has lavished bribes on the Praetorians. They are the only soldiers in Rome. So as long as he has the Praetorians on board, there's nothing really that the Senate can do. He also has lavished money on the legions because ultimately,
One of the other many hypocrisies that Caligula is kind of ripping to shreds is the idea that the role of the princeps is as anything other than a military commander. He is basically, I mean, he's not drawing attention to it deliberately, but he is making manifest
that the underpinning of the entire system that Augustus has set up, which is supposed to be this partnership between the emperor and the Senate, is actually founded on the support of the legions. That's what matters. And so it's not surprising that senatorial opponents of Caligula recognize this as well. And of course, the commanders of the legions are themselves senators. And so Caligula
There is a conspiracy against him. And it's not surprising that it's focused not in Rome, but on the Rhine, which is where you have the highest concentration of legions in the entire empire.
And it seems to have involved numerous senators, two of Caligula's sisters, interestingly, and most dangerously of all, the guy who effectively has the command of the legions on the Rhine, who is a very seasoned general and a very experienced guy at kind of negotiating all the various changes in regimes and things, a man called Gaitulicus. And...
Again, the accounts of this are very garbled, but you can kind of piece together that Caligula is alerted to what's happening and he moves with very, very impressive energy and speed. Sets off from Italy for the Rhine. It's his first trip outside Italy as emperor. Descends and surprises Gertulicus, who is arrested and executed. Caligula sisters are sent to prison islands.
So that thing you read at the beginning about Caligula saying to them, you know, I have swords as well as islands. So in other words, stay on the island and stay put or else I will have you hacked to death with swords. And the Senate then endures this absolute reign of terror. So Caligula Caligula goes to Germany. This is when he raises more legions.
It's when he does that whole thing with the shells on the shore of the channel, which we talked about in our series on Roman Britain, and which I frankly said then, and repeat, I've no idea what's going on with that. I mean, there are so many theories. We don't know. It's an example of, I think, of just how garbled lots of the stories that are told about Caligula becomes.
But anyway, he then comes back from Germany in Gaul. And while he's in Gaul, he's met by various emissaries from the Senate. And Caligula tells them, I no longer acknowledge your authority. I despise you. I do not recognize that you have authority. any kind of role to play in the running of the empire.
And it's on his return to Rome, it seems that the horrors and the outrages that Suetonius lists, which we just went through, that they seem to have been perpetrated. And it's a reign of terror that works because the Senate is effectively left completely broken. You know, they feel powerless before him. They grovel before him and just, you know, like,
And I think that that's why he has the fame that he does. So in recent times, he's become almost a kind of existential hero.
So this notion that politics is purely about power and Caligula is perhaps the emperor who most brutally demonstrates that, most brutally recognizes it. But having said that, he does make one terrible mistake. So you ask, well, what's the basis of his power? The basis of his power is his popularity with the Praetorians.
And so it is foolish of him then that he can't... Caligula does seem to have loved a joke. And he can't resist making a joke even about Praetorians. And there is one Praetorian in particular, a guy called Cassius Kyria, who's actually rather like me. He's massive, you know, huge gym toned body, enormous rippling muscles. but has perhaps a slightly effeminate voice, a slightly soft voice.
And so Caligula finds the combination of, you know, the muscle man and the kind of the slightly female sounding voice very amusing. Yes. And so Suetonius writes, Caligula would make priapus or Venus the watchword. And sometimes when the tribune had reason to thank him for something, Caligula would hold out his hand to be kissed, then make an obscene gesture with his fingers.
Showing 421–440 of 535 · page 22 of 27
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